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Once you go north of the Village of Lansing on Triphammer Road, the state speed limit of 55 miles per hour applies until you get to Peruville Road (34B).  The Lansing Town Board voted to support a petition by residents of the strip between Asbury and Peruville Roads to lower the speed limit to 45mph, and to request that the NYS Department oOf transportation (DOT) conduct a traffic study.

The strip of Triphammer Road in question is more densely populated than the rest of the rural road.  Town Clerk Debbie Crandall noted that this is not the first time they have tried to lower the speed limit.  She said she has records of several petitions going back to 1998.

It is not the only tactic they have tried.  In 2007 they asked then Sheriff Peter Meskill to send patrols to the neighborhood to catch speeders who typically exceeded the 55mph limit.  Meskill warned that in such cases residents are more likely to be caught for speeding than others, but he promised the patrols.

Lansing Supervisor Kathy Miller said that among the petition signees are drivers from Genoa and King Ferry.

"To them it's dangerous, regardless of whether they are just going to North Lansing or heading to Genoa or King Ferry.  Obviously it's something that's playing on their minds.  It is a dangerous piece of road."

Miller also noted there have been requests to replace a blinking yellow light at the intersection of Asbury and Triphammer Roads, a notorious accident intersection.

"When Steve Farkas was Supervisor he tried to work through the County to get the traffic light put back up," noted Deputy Supervisor Sharon Bowman.

"Even though a lot of those signatures are not local, we do have another development going up," noted Councilman Ed LaVigne.  "Cayuga Farms is on that road and that might play into this.  If we send this into the DOT we should add the fact that there are pending developments in the area.  There might be three lanes, and I can easily see this going to 40 miles an hour."

The DOT refers to new traffic signals, speed bumps, raised crosswalks, curb extensions and speed limit reductions as 'traffic calming'.  Requests by local residents and governments are often not successful unless fatal accidents have occurred.  The Village of Lansing was successful in a petition to lower the speed limit on East Shore Drive near Esty Hill and the Bolton Point Water Commission, but last year the Town of Lansing's request to lower the speed limit on 34B between Triphammer and East Shore Drive was denied.

The Board voted unanimously to support the petition, and to attach a report from the Tompkins County Sheriff's Office documenting a serious accident in 2013 that occurred at the intersection of triphammer and Asbury.

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